Dark Era: Devil's Deal
by Bone White Butterfly
Summary: When Magneto returns from the dead, Remy, the former Acolyte with whom he shares a bitter past, refuses to return to his side. This one choice incites a personal war that will decimate the mutant underground and usher in a new era. Some Romy.
1. Chapter 1

**FOR THE RECORD: **This is a fanfiction based on a fast and loose combination of MARVEL's various X-Universes, mainly X-Men: Evolution. For those of you who actually know Gambit's early history, with the Tithing, child slave trading, Weapon X-ing, and inter-Guild marrying…eh-eh, _no._ This is also my official entry into M-rated material. I am a writer, not a moviemaker, so I don't need to hand you a laundry list of offensive, violent, and/or sexual acts that happen in this story. I merely kindly suggest that you hold onto your seats.

_Devil's Deal_

—Part I—

The most dangerous wolves wore sheep's clothing.

Jean-Luc LeBeau preferred to wear sweats, to tell the truth, but the situation called for an Armani. At the moment, he desperately wanted Kevlar and, God knew why, a very big sword. Instead, he had the Armani and a fragile wine glass that was only a threat to expensive carpet. Absently, he mimed another sip from it. The liquid didn't even touch his lips. He wouldn't swallow a drop while he was standing three feet from Marius Boudreaux, Patriarch of the Assassin's Guild.

It was unlikely that it could be poisoned. He just wouldn't chance being even the slightest bit intoxicated in the older gentleman's presence.

Gentleman.

He almost laughed. They were gentlemen now. After years of circling and posturing and lunging at each other's throats, they were gentlemen. How absurd.

What was worse, they were having an actual civilized conversation. They talked about D.C.'s newest jingoist policies, and they both agreed that the warmongers in office should be shot. The only question was whether it would be an Assassin's bullet of a Thief's. Shootings were more up Marius's alley, but Jean-Luc had a personal vendetta against the government. Homeland Security was combing every corner of the nation in search of his little boy. New Orleans was under a microscope. Gambit hadn't dared to show his face there for a long time. Jean-Luc missed seeing those red eyes flash.

Jean-Luc turned and watched Marius's youngest granddaughter dance. The girl was home on spring break away from an anonymous college where she was pursuing an obscure degree. There was a carefree openness in her face. Looking at her, Jean-Luc thought she couldn't possibly know that her family's business had the monopoly on hired killings. That, or that college of hers had damn good acting classes.

The man she danced with was blonde and blue-eyed, with a slim, muscular frame like a fresh green twig: strong and flexible—until a stronger hand snapped it. He made a good dancer. He made a good company figurehead.

Jean-Luc was thankful for that. He had slunk through the shadows all his life; the Guild's decision to disguise itself as philanthropic business conglomerate had left him completely in the dark. He barely understood what a conglomerate even was—and philanthropic? That was a laugh. He was glad to leave all that nonsense to the blonde dancer. Let the young pup bask in the sun and fool the adoring crowds into thinking wolves were innocent, so long as the old alpha male back in the shadows was still the leader of the pack.

The young man's gaze met Jean-Luc's for a moment. His bright blue eyes were so like a doll's, glassy and masterfully crafted by a loving hand. They glinted with mischief and a bit of respect. The mischief was always there, but the respect was rare and—Jean-Luc knew—hard won. Years of effort had earned him only the barest twinkling of it in a blue eye.

Their gazes split, and Jean-Luc put his full attention back on Marius. The young man continued to dance across the floor with Belladonna Boudreaux. Who the girl was or who she would become was uncertain. Her innocent smile could be a deception. If that were the case, then she wouldn't be alone. Her dance partner was also a wolf in sheep's clothing. A demon with doll's eyes.

Etienne LeBeau.

XXX

The high-rise's ballroom had a fourth wall made completely of glass. The floor stretched out another thirty feet beyond it to form a balcony that overlooked the city lights and their reflected glow on the bay. Etienne leaned heavily on the thick marble railing. He sighed at the view. The city's face had changed after its ill-fated rendezvous with Mademoiselle Katrina. Now, so many years later, its soul was hidden behind a façade of shiny, corporate prosperity. He wondered if the soul had changed as well.

The thought preoccupied him as the crimson sun drowned in the bay and the red glow that lit the right side of his face dimmed. Then it suddenly went dark.

He turned to find a gentleman standing beside him, blocking the light. The man was an old one but still as straight-backed as any youth. Powerful muscles coiled under his slackening skin. His silver-white hair was thick and wild, yet tamed for the moment. He looked both out of place and imposing in his tailored suit, and, though his cold blue eyes stared straight ahead at the bay, Etienne felt them boring through his skin.

For someone made up of so many contradictions, the man looked real enough.

Still, Etienne prayed for it to only be a stray nightmare. A strong hand came down on his shoulder. He stiffened but forced himself to eye the hand askance, pick it off of him, and ask, "Who th' Hell are you?"

"Erik Lensherr, for the moment." The man kept a straight face as he studied the bay. "You're very good," he confided. "Even though I knew it had to be you, I couldn't be sure until just now."

"What're you—"

Two steely blue eyes struck, and he recoiled. The man smiled at the reaction he had received. "It's you."

XXX

Lensherr's voice was so certain, there was no refuting it. Etienne looked away. "Why're you here?" he asked.

"When I revealed that I was still alive, Colossus came rushing off a plane onto American soil within hours, and Pyro was on his knees, begging to be taken back, but the Gambit"—he turned and eyed Etienne coldly—"hid. Never trust a thief."

"I'm not a thief," the younger man replied with venom. "Haven' you heard? Changed professions. I'm a businessman now."

Lensherr laughed darkly. "Is there a difference?"

"Probably not," he sighed. "What d'you want…Lensherr, is it? If y' hadn't noticed, I'm no foot solider anymo'."

"You never were, Remy."

"Don't call me that," he snapped.

As if to a child, Lensherr explained, "It's your name."

"So is Etienne. It's Remy Etienne LeBeau, but Remy…that name's dead now. You killed it." He closed his eyes. "Why're you here? I'm not going to see the errors of my ways an' leave everything to go away with you, if that's what you're thinking."

Lensherr turned to look through the glass wall at the restrained party going on within. "Is there anything to leave?" he asked softly. "That ragged man in the suit who looks like a mercenary penguin—Jean-Luc? Don't you remember what he did to you? And Henri, that blonde cherub wreathed with fake smiles? Remind me, what exactly did he say when you fell into his arms, crying? 'Get away from me, you...freak'?"

Etienne glared out at the bay. "Demon," he corrected.

"Demon," Lensherr agreed with a nod, having known the right word all along. "Why would you stay with people like that? Are they even worth the air they breathe?"

"They're my family."

"Family? Isn't this the same family that threw you away? Remy,"—he repeated the name in a steely voice—"Remy, don't you see? They only wanted you back because they realized you were useful to them."

"And you're any different?"

Lensherr frowned. "I've always known your worth."

"Exploited every penny," Etienne muttered through gritted teeth.

XXX

Inside, Belladonna Boudreaux looked down sharply as her silverware rattled. Many people who had been enjoying the catered dinner did the same.

Henri LeBeau sensed the disturbance in the crowd and turned to see his brother out on the balcony, agitated and shrinking away from a livid older man. His fingers twitched. He was a LeBeau. He protected his own. He was also part of a Guild. Secrecy came first.

There was a dais set up at the side of the room. Henri all but vaulted up onto it. He commandeered the podium with equal parts charismatic grace and horrified desperation. The shiny black button at the base of the microphone was small and simplistic, so innocent looking. He pressed it, and the wall of glass went black, hiding Etienne and the unwanted visitor from view. An appreciative gasp rose from the assemblage as Henri's image appeared on the darkened glass. He cleared his throat, met his father's inquiring look, and began, "This is a proud day for my brother, Etienne. Unfortunately, to his sincere regret, he had some business come up and can't be the one to greet you all."

He looked towards his projected image, behind which his brother stood frightened and alone. His lips thinned. "My name is Henri LeBeau," he said. "I've never understood my brother. Not many people do. You look in his eyes—and you know he sees the world differently. My brother's a brilliant strategist. Good bluffer, too. Never play poker with him if you value your life." As he waited for the laughter to die, his eyes flitted between his father and a door to the balcony. He almost sagged in relief when Jean-Luc tensed and pulled aside an oddly muscular server.

Quiet returned, and Henri smiled. "Etienne, he has this ability to bring about change. He took our family's—company—and he turned it into the success it is today, but that wasn't enough for him.

"My brother has a big heart. I wasn't surprised when he told me he wanted to give to charity. It was a bit of shock, though, to learn he was planning to use massive amounts of corporate funds to do it. And I don't know how, but he talked the Company into it…but then, he's always been able to con our father into anything…

XXX

"Today, the LeBeau Corporation is launching a charitable organization called the Guild, which actively seeks out, aids, and educates talented children in at-risk situations."

Lensherr had grown quiet, listening to Henri's speech as it came out through a hidden speaker. "Talented? At risk?" he repeated, amused. "The boy's talking about mutants—a tax deductible charity that protects and trains the same mutants the government oppresses. Your idea?"

Etienne said nothing.

"Clever boy. I need you for ideas like that," Lensherr pressed. "The Brotherhood can fight, and it will win. But I don't want to destroy the nation in the process. Why should I, when you can trick America into giving itself to me on a silver platter?"

Etienne said nothing.

"Come with me."

The LeBeau son turned from the hand that stretched towards him. A single word ran through his head ten thousand times before he managed to break his silence. "Never."

He gasped as his watch hurled itself and him into Lensherr's waiting hand. The hand closed over his wrist. Wide-eyed, he grabbed the old man's clothes and snarled, "Let go of me!" The silk shirt started to glow red.  
Lensherr's other hand latched over his, forcing him to keep contact with the now-explosive material. The man's eyes went hard. "No."

Etienne tensed to lash out with his legs, but his feet were savagely kicked out from under him. His left temple crashed into the railing, once, twice, and after that he lost count. It stopped sometime after he had gone completely limp. Only Lensherr's hold on his hand and wrist held him aloft with his head bowed at the man's belt. His feet were four, maybe five feet above the balcony's floor. Lensherr continued to rise into the air, standing on a large metal disk he had summoned.

Buried deep beneath haze of pain and drifting consciousness, Etienne's training screamed for him to fight. He still had his legs—his head, if it came down to tooth and nail—but a tiny, insidious voice at the back of his aching brain whispered that it was no use.

It was the voice of experience. Too late, he recalled how the mutant patriarch dealt with disobedience. His body remembered. It had never forgotten. And, for him, it had given up all resistance. Against his will, his body began to play the part of an inanimate object. His mind rebelled, but it was fighting a losing battle—with itself. Maybe he was a toy, the voice supposed, meant to be dropped and picked up again at will, meant to be played with. Maybe he was just a possession. After all, when in his life had he not been?

Too dazed to fight back, he could only blink with glassy eyes as the Devil took back his own.

XXX

The bullet came from a silenced gun. It punched through Lensherr's right shoulder, one of the few places not shielded by the limp body of his captive. The pain didn't make him let go of the young man. On the contrary,

Etienne gasped as the grip on both his hand and wrist tightened impossibly. Lensherr snarled at the waiters with handguns who were spreading themselves out along the balcony.

The metal disk he stood on shifted back several feet. Etienne slid over the railing to hang hundreds of feet from the ground in the night air.

If the old man let go…

The thought crossed the mind of every gunman, and they adjusted their grips. From shoot to kill to release the hostage in milliseconds. Seeing this, Lensherr said one contemptuous word: "Guns." The firearms flew from their hands, turned, and took aim at their owners' vital organs.

Etienne's face saddened as he heard the weapons cock, knowing full well what would happen next. But this time, it wouldn't be anonymous soldiers; it would be LeBeau men. Men who would die for him. Men he was responsible for. And what could he do to stop it?

"I'll never be part of your Brotherhood again," he declared.

Lensherr hauled him up by his wrist like a limp rag doll. Etienne jerked his chin up with a glare and twisted, fighting to get a foothold on the metal disk. He was told, "If you're bargaining for their lives, you're doing a horrible job of it."

He found his footing and straightened. They were of a height, though Lensherr could snap him in two. Despite his head injury, he met Lensherr's eyes squarely. If his voice shuddered and his fear was all too obvious, at least he had found something worthwhile to stand up for. "I'm not your pawn," he said, ignoring the grip that threatened to break his wrist. Softer, he added, "But I'm not your enemy."

The dangerous red glow of Lensherr's shirt lit up the old man's look of contempt.

"Yet," Etienne qualified. "You kill my men, an' I will be. I'll become an X-Man."

He got the reaction he had expected. His wrist felt like it might snap. "You wouldn't live long enough!" Lensherr snarled.

"I'm no use t'you dead," he countered and almost smiled when his captor's eyes flashed, knowing he had won the point. "I'm neutral right now, Lensherr. I broke all my contacts with the X-Men when I went underground. I don't help them; I don't hurt you. I'll join you when Hell pays Earth a visit, but I won't join the X-Men unless you do somethin' stupid.

"Think, Lensherr. Where am I more useful t'you? Here, keepin' Uncle Sam from enslaving mutants? Or wit' you, trussed up in some cell, because that's the only way you can keep me from killin' you?" He let the volatile energy flow out of Lensherr's shirt and back into his fingertips. "Your choice."

Lensherr's eyes blazed.

Etienne met his gaze with two unnaturally blue eyes, eyes too beautiful to be real. No hate. No fear. Doll's eyes.

Fakes.

Lensherr threw him back onto the balcony. He grunted as he smashed into the stone tiles but managed to stand on his own. As he turned to face his childhood nightmare, the silenced guns veered away from his men to aim themselves at him. He swept out his arms in welcome, but said again, "I'm no use t'you dead."

The guns fired.

Etienne LeBeau crumpled to the ground.

—To Be Continued—


	2. Chapter 2

**Last warning:** M means M, dammit.

XXX

XXX—Part II—XXX

XXX

Etienne awoke in his room to Henri's cheek pressed into his hand. The man had fallen asleep beside him, upper body slumped over onto the one patch of his bed turned sickbed not crisscrossed by tubes and wires of dubious purpose. Etienne's taped fingers flexed and brushed the rosebud lips he'd envied as a child. They had belonged to Henri's mother. He had hated his brother for having them, and for having her. Gently, he pulled his hand from beneath the dozing man to reach up and touch his own mouth. Thin, pale lips curled into a confused frown. He opened his eyes. The ceiling appeared, a brilliant scarlet hue for the first time in five years.

The mask of Etienne LeBeau was gone, and the Devil's eyes had returned. This was twelve different shades of not good at all.

"That's the doc's fault, the mutant one. Couldn't heal the damage without fixing _everything,_ the empowered, half-assed chit," a familiar gravelly voice snarled.

Despite the situation, one corner of Etienne's natural mouth tugged up again as his gaze slid to the doorway where Jean-Luc leaned indolently. He shook his head and made to ease himself up higher on the nest of pillows. "She couldn'a been that bad, papa," he chided before the pain seared through his side and he collapsed back down with a gasp. "But then again…"

"Oh, that's your brother's idea. He was of half a mind to seal the bullets in, give you proper incentive to stay the hell away from that freak."

_"Papa!"_

"I'll call him what I like, boy. 'T'aint natural for a man so old t' be so strong. No matter how much I wish it was." Jean-Luc looked down at his lined hands. The silence stretched and stretched, coming ever closer to its breaking point. Etienne watched the tense man finally snap and slam the door shut. "Dammit, what were you thinking! What in God's name were you thinking, Re—" He hunched forward, then kicked the door. "Etienne," he corrected himself

The younger man smiled wanly, brushed russet-brown hair out of his glowing eyes, and chuckled mirthlessly, "Don't look much like Etienne now, do I?"

XXX

Remy LeBeau rearing his head in New Orleans was a disaster.

Fortunately, Etienne had a plan.

Jean Luc and Henri told him _non. _Absolutely not. Or at least Henri had. How a man with Jean Luc's mouth had raised a gentleman like Henri was a mystery to even the greatest of men's minds. Vulgar or not, though, their reactions had been the same. Which was why Etienne now ducked quickly through the back alleyways with a dying image inducer on his wrist after escaping his security detail. Self-conscious, he found himself fitfully glancing at every reflective surface, most often the face of the watch, searching for the slightest hint of red. He needed sunglasses, was desperate for them, but they had become too much of a tell. He might as well scream fugitive mutie from the nearest rooftop.

It was a relief when he slid through the back service door of the dilapidated hotel and claws spun, slammed, and pinned him to the crumbling wall. He edgily eyed his reflection in the claws' almost metal blue sheen and saw the first flicker of russet, red, and ebon as the inducer briefly succumbed to the strain of locking away Remy in the blue-eyed cage of Etienne LeBeau. Remy never did well in cages.

Etienne cleared his throat, carefully, so as not to nick his Adam's apple on the blades that hovered so close, so still. So long as he didn't move, he was in no danger of disfigurement. The flats of the middle two claws cradled his jaw almost tenderly. "Logan," he purred to the figure engulfed in shadow from the crooked elbows back before snapping, "I won't play th' fool to prove I am no imposter. The inducer is dying, and I need it. Unless you have a spare on you, _get off."_

The arms and the blades with them pulled back into the shadow and Etienne immediately snatched the inducer off his wrist and placed it in a pocket. When his hand came out, there were three glowing ball bearings clenched between fore and middle finger and several more in reserve clutched in the palm.

"Easy, Shuga'," called a voice in the gloom, beyond the spotlight shining in his face. "It's just us three here." A part of him mourned that he didn't de-charge the bearings until the spotlight came off and his devil's eyes saw the truth of her words in the dim room. A part of him cursed that he had brought a metal weapon, knowing who might lurk behind every corner he turned. He forced himself to straighten from his defensive crouch and shutter his eyes as he saw her glove reach for the switch in the darkness. After they had all acclimated to the sudden light from the caged bulb above the door, he pulled on a smile for Rogue. "'Ello, Cherie."

XXX

Etienne smiled fondly at the two near-inseperable X-Men, one of whom he could sense still loved him while the other was thinking more along the lines of shish kebab. "I'm glad that you came," he said with a smile to Rogue. "And Logan…thank you for your time."

Rogue frowned at the nicety. "You've really changed, Remy, haven't you?"

He closed his eyes. "Etienne, please. Gambit if'n—_if_—you must," he corrected himself, refusing to slide back into the old patterns. With her it was the hardest, because she had been central to the bright moments in those dark times, and if he was ever nostalgic about his rotting past, it was when he saw her. His mouth worked. He was a businessman now; he should get down to business. "Dis…" he sighed. Straight to the point, then. Business. "Magneto," he said and watched their expressions darken. "You've heard, then."

"Heard, heard, and nothing but heard," growled the Wolverine.

"Pyro and Colossus both fell off radar a few months back," Rogue added. "Thing's have just been too…busy to follow up on it. But then you…"

Asked them to come. After he had cut all ties with them and went undercover in the guise of his own not-blood brother. The cover story was that Jean Luc was a philanthropist and had supported many foster children over the years, of which Remy had been one of dozens, different only in that he had been kicked out for being a mutant over a decade ago. This even had the advantage of being 100% true, discounting the philanthropy. Etienne was the fake.

Etienne found himself rubbing his wrist in memory. "I had a little visit two nights ago. On the bright side, no one was killed. But dere were a lot of guns an' bullets an' men with families an'…you do what you have to do, non?"

Rogue voice hardened and twanged, "You didn't." He saw them both tense and ready themselves, as though waiting for Magneto to stroll through the door right then. And he felt hurt. "I told him to go to hell and he shot me about thirty times," he said with forced nonchalance. "…One of my better family reunions, come to think. You'll want to leave now, so, business. You want to recruit from my fosters; so will the Brotherhood. De X-Men would not expose those children if they knew some would go to de Brotherhood, but you know Magneto. You know he sees you like traitors, an'…you wouldn't expose them. He _would._ Once the children are eighteen they can leave and join whoever they want. But before, for their sakes, I have to be neutral. I'm sorry." He pulled the inducer from his pocket to check the time. "If you'll excuse me, I have an appointment I can't afford to miss."

"Buckethead?" Wolverine sneered.

"Masque," Etienne countered softly, too soft for Rogue to hear, but the feral's expression shattered instantly, and it was good that Rogue couldn't see that, either.

"You'd best get to the checkpoint, Stripes," Logan said to her after an instant's hesitation. Rogue protested, but he shot a look back at her, and she grudgingly walked to the door, a bike helmet under one arm. It was one of the few excuses she had for wearing gloves and a jacket in summer, and on her, it worked. Rough and tumble bars and the menacing yet All-American image of a biker gang served as a prime disguise for an underground railroad that ran south to the Gulf. The goal, of course, was to get identified mutants to an island or South American country that wasn't a North American protectorate or ally. Cuba was ideal, but the tourist traps were a good start. Some days, Etienne was tempted to try it.

He was tempted by many things.

Rogue stopped at the door and turned to him, and it was one of those moments. An impasse. A final parting. Etienne just had the feeling that the paths of their lives would never run together again. He could only hope they never collided. "Goodbye, Cherie," he said.

"Goodbye…Etienne," she said slowly, the word rolling strangely off her tongue, and then she turned and left.

It was a count of exactly ten before Wolverine instantly had his hands around Etienne's arms and was thrusting him again against the wall. "Masque?" The voice was strangled and loathing and actually concerned. Etienne looked at him and saw a paternal look trying to form in the Feral's stormy eyes. A look that needed to be squashed fast.

"Don't you dare," he snarled. "Don't you dare give a rat's ass about me now. Masque is a saint, a bloody, canonized saint compared to Magneto, and I never saw you care a bit then, so don't you _dare_ start giving a damn now!"

"You were an adult when you joined Magneto," Wolverine hedged, as though that would defend his actions.

Etienne froze, stared, then started to laugh hysterically. "Adult. Well, I suppose you couldn't call me a child after he took me in, now could you. But even if, what do you care. I'm an adult, as you said."

Wolverine switched to a dirty but not unexpected tactic. "Does your father know you're doing this?"

"He stopped deserving to know when I was twelve an' he threw de demon out his house. Let go. Don't make me be late!" he half-threatened, half-begged. "You have a checkpoint to get to, don't you? A Rogue to get 'ome."

And the Wolverine let him go. "Twelve." The word was repeated in disbelief.

He tugged his clothes straight. "I wondered, sometimes, what it would have been like to have been a normal teenager, but as you say, I was an adult when I joined Magneto."

"Rem—"

"Don't you _ever_ use dat name!" he snapped, breaking. "Remy n'est… I…I am _not. _Get out!" He clenched his fists shaking, before forcing them open and down at his sides. "I canna' be late, not for 'im. Not Masque. Get out." And he didn't wait but moved for the stairwell that led up into the foreclosed hotel. He stumbled up five flights, down the hall, and to the right, ducking his head to avoid eye contact with any homeless who would happily report a mutie for the posted reward. He did not want mind-blowing torture in his near future…at least not more than he had already signed on for. He lengthened his stride.

Masque was waiting.

XXX

Bracing himself, Etienne darted into the dilapidated presidential suite and shut the door behind him. He winced at the indignant, wet and fleshy hiss that greeted him.

"What have you done to my art, you impudent, you…you _wretch!"_

Eyes firmly shut, bowing low, Etienne began, apologetic, "Monsieur Masque, I"—but stopped in favor of trying not to scream as gnarled, uneven fingers gripped his throat and his flesh beneath the touch writhed like frantic worms.

_"Ruined!" _Hands ran over his face. Mouth, eyelids, both were suddenly gone, wiped off and replaced by seamless flesh in an instant. He couldn't see, couldn't speak, couldn't scream. There was also something wrong, misshapen, with his arms, but the nerves were too busy screaming for him to figure out exactly what. "I will leave you like this," Masque hissed as he continued to pull and twist Etienne's flesh. "Sightless, mouthless, horrific! I will leave and let them find you and kill you but live forever with the horror I made you into. Wretch! Defiler! You were my Opus! Gone, all gone." Hands drew up his face so the last word, hot, wet, infected his right ear. "_Why?" _

Sobbing only partially from the pain, breathing desperately through his nose, Etienne threw his arms around Masque's midsection (it could not be called a waist) and drew himself close, leg against leg as much as he could. It was time to act the part. Masque didn't have a heart to pluck at, but for all his grotesqueness, the mutant had a kind of vanity that could be manipulated. And like all men, he had needs, wants, desires…and, above all, curiosity.

The broader hand smeared across his face, forming too-large, rough hewn lips over his teeth. With effort he wrenched them apart. The ripping of the thin web of flesh that sealed them together felt, in comparison to everything else, almost pleasant.

"Theb," he gasped, struggling with the new shapes. "Theyb…they did this. They didn'b wan–want be…bme…mbe"—Masque snarled and Etienne gasped as he was swept up in a domineering kiss that claimed every part of mouth, remapping it as the "master" willed. The long misshapen snake of a tongue stopped up his strangled scream, then lingered, testing the changed confines as Etienne tried to gasp around its mass. Finally, it pulled out, hugging one corner, and wound down his jaw and onto his neck. "Them?" Masque whispered into the hollow of his throat, "Tell me about them, Etienne, angel."

The hands pulled him forward to sit beside the mangled man on the suite's dingy couch. There, a lump of an arm pinned him to the torso. The smaller hand, this one almost human brought his neck up to the asymmetrical face. Unseeing, and almost thankful for it, he whispered back breathlessly with his newly sculpted lips, "Papa, et mon frére. I begged d'em, begged, I swear, Monsieur, never a Healer. Never. Close th' wounds, go to you for d' internal bleeding and scars. I remember, Monsieur. I tried!" Never mind that he had been unconscious for that decision, and doing it that way with that many bullet wounds would have left him paralyzed for life. If there was one thing Etienne excelled at, though, it was playing a part. He had been Remy. That life discarded, he became the corporate darling "Etti" LeBeau, the sweet golden boy the media had swallowed whole when he brokenly told Vanity Fair about the cruelties his monstrous foster brother, "the Mutant," had subjected him to as a child.

Now he was the angel Etienne, Masque's ingénue, a role made from shades of le Phantomme's Christine, young Luke Skywalker, Oliver Twist, and other such innocent fictions. "But Henri," he forged on in the lilting voice he had crafted, "mon frére, he looks at my face, _your_ face and sees his Maman…and he hates it. He hates me. Demon, that's what he calls me. He brought de healer. He was going to make de healer leave de bullets _in,_ and Papa almost let him! It was them. I swear. Them. Monsieur, please!"

Halfway through the rush of all-but truths, the mutant had begun to rock him, cooing thickly, and Etienne just clung, praying. He was a dead man if Masque refused to remake him. He could be left, horribly deformed and helpless for the Friends of Humanity to collect at will—or maybe worse. He shuddered at the thought of being turned into one of the demented artitst's sometimes mannequins, sometimes playthings, whose leg muscles had been restrung so they couldn't walk, only buck and shudder.

All of that and more would be welcome, though, if it kept Magneto at bay.

Jean-Luc and Henri were close enough to the mutant community to have had heard the stories about Masque. That was why they had been so against him going to the Master of Flesh. They didn't understand why Etienne would place himself in the hands of this monster. Malformed lips kissed his eyes. His breath hitched as his new, lashless lids flew open. They didn't understand, and _God, _he didn't want them to understand that this, the creature laving his cheek with its tongue and tasting his tears, was the lesser evil.

* * *

Told you: M. In other news, I will be doing my best to post every two days until this story is complete.


	3. Chapter 3

XXX

Part Three

XXX

Henri LeBeau was beyond angry. He was pissed, repulsed, and fucking terrified. His hands were shaking, which just made him angrier. It was throwing off his aim. The man took a shuddering breath. He shifted, tightening his grip on his gun. The weapon was just a Browning, an HP Practical: shiny, sleek, woefully underpowered. He wished it was a ray-gun. Or Excalibur. Nice, normal revolvers just made mutants annoyed. They made demons laugh.

The rasping chuckle from the bed at the heart of the dilapidated hotel forced goosebumps up through his skin. In a sick, twisted, satisfied purr, the monster mused, "So, the handsome prince has come alone to kill the hideous beast. How _Hollywood_." The mutant that called itself Masque sat up higher on the bed, leaning a humped back against the headboard. The blankets that had covered the creature when Henri first stormed into the darkened room had fallen away, leaving Masque bare and exposed, only a few small parts of the misshapen hulk covered by a thin, trembling human shield.

Etienne's eyes pleaded and screamed at him silently. Henri saw his brother's bared stomach and throat spasm in time as the diaphragm worked desperately, trying to suck in air that wouldn't come. The younger man was naked save for a mutant's restraining collar snapped about his neck. Staring at him, all Henri could think was rescue and eviscerate, but he didn't move. Everything just kept barreling on like a train wreck in motion. Masque's larger hand, a massive almost-claw, grabbed both of his captive's hands when Etienne tried to sign a message to his brother. Etienne's eyes bulged and let loose what should have been a scream heard for miles but what came out only as a stuttering, barely audible whimper. Masque relinquished his hold and moved his clawed appendage down to pet Etienne's stomach in soothing motions.

Henri could only shudder. His brother's hands were no longer hands but a fused and tangled mass of flesh riddled with exposed nerve, vein, and bone, but that wasn't the worst that Masque had done to him. He stared helplessly at Etienne's face. Wide, red eyes were rolled up to the ceiling in agony. That was all there was to the face, just eyes. A swipe of a tongue and the nose and mouth had vanished mid-shout, replaced by seamless flesh, leaving Etienne breathless and unable to inhale or make sounds beyond short muffled mewls. He was suffocating, and there was nothing Henri could do.

The sounds of Etienne's panic, the whimpers and the rustling from his useless thrashing, dwindled down even as his eyes rolled up further in his head. "Fix him before I fucking kill you," Henri snarled, and Etienne, shocked to hear his brother swear, managed to jerk forward and stare for a moment before the suffocation overwhelmed him and he slumped, unconscious in Masque's hold.

The deformed mutant eyed Henry with disdain. "Throw me your firearm. I'd hate to have my angel die, looking this way." After the briefest pause, Henri smoothly ejected the magazine and tossed the revolver. Masque blinked at the clip he still held gripped in his fist. "That as well."

Masque was answered by a string of French words that would have shocked even the infamously acid-tongued Jean-Luc LeBeau. But the magazine was thrown and caught and reunited with its gun. The Browning was maneuvered into the one hand with actual fingers, turned, and pointed at Henri's chest, and only then did the mutant touch the center of his unconscious captive's face, idly sculpting a rough nose as though the tawny flesh was mere clay. Etienne, dead to the world, inhaled. Henri released the breath he was holding. Masque cocked his head.

"You are relieved that he will not die," the malformed hunchback reasoned shrewdly, "but he was in no real danger until you forced me to defend myself. And you don't want him near me, but it was your actions that led him here. Should I curse at you, I wonder, for hurting my angel? Or should I thank you for returning him to my bed?" As Henri's teeth clenched, the mutant glanced down for a moment and sighed. "Oh, look what he has made me do to you, my masterpiece. And what has he done to you himself?"

"Let him go."

Masque looked back up, tracked the sight of the gun to Henri's new position a foot or two closer to the bed, and said, "No." He nudged a bone back inside the mess of flesh that had been Etienne's hands minutes before. "When I made my angel, I made him for all to see, to stare at in wonder. My masterpiece," he hummed. "My gift to the world. But you are all so caught up in greed. You want him for yourselves. The X-Men's Gambit, Magneto's Remy, the government's most wanted, your brother. Bah!

"You are all unworthy. As am I." Masque shrugged a brute's shrug. "And yet… For all that he does fear me, does loathe me and all that I am…I am the one he runs to. I am the monster he can stomach. Not Magneto." Mismatched eyes bored into Henri. "Not you.

"Remove him," the mutant ordered, gesturing to a place behind Henri. The LeBeau heir risked a look back at the door. Two tall, stunning, very well-endowed women covered in blood flashed perfect white smiles at him. Like that, he knew his men were dead. The Latina's eyes glowed for a brief instant. Mutants.

"No harm will come to him so long as none comes to me," Masque promised and threatened. "And, unlike you and your little gang,"—his tone spoke volumes of contempt towards the guild—"I can keep him safe from the armored Jew. In the mutant world, I am feared. I am _beloved_."

Henri stood frozen. He had come here to save Etienne from his idiocy, only to fail completely. He had stormed into the room, gun cocked, and his brother had looked at him in horror, had whispered, "No, you _fool!"_ But he hadn't listened, only raged at the sight of his naked brother caught in the grip of a monster. Now Etienne had paid for that rage, that stupidity.

Cowed, he allowed himself to be removed from the room by the women. There were corpses in the hall, stacked neatly in a pile. LeBeau soldiers. The Greek model giggled when he slumped. They were on a completely different level than him, he realized with a quiver of fear. Two anorexic sticks had slaughtered his trained soldiers, and he hadn't even heard them die.

He had thought Etienne a foolish little boy, but he was the fool. Etienne had tried to warn him, tried to explain why he needed to handle mutants on his own, but he hadn't understood. He turned and left the building as the Latina held out a hand and his men began to dissolve in a spray of smoking liquid.

XXX

It was many weeks later when Etienne appeared again in the Guild complex. Henri didn't notice until Etienne, blonde, beautiful Etienne, pried the brandy bottle from his stiff fingers, set it gently on the mantle, made Henri look up meet his perfect blue eyes, and slammed a fist into his jaw. As Henri crumpled into the heavy oak chair, his brother screamed over him, "What the hell were you thinking! He would have killed you! Worse than killed you!" The blue eyes were impossibly wide. The fear and vulnerability there made Henri ache.

"Was supposed to protect you," he muttered thickly. Now that he had looked into his brother's eyes he was unable to look away, and so he stared, numb. "My job, to protect you, but I can't."

The eyes softened. They seemed to be whispering to him. "Henri, no," they begged. He was falling into them. They were too beautiful. Too perfect. And the cost…

He searched his brother's eyes, remembering the trembling finger bones half exposed to the air, stuck out at all the wrong angles from a ball of muscle, vein, and skin. He remembered the single white digit that had fallen onto the sheets, its tip stretched and misshapen.

He forced himself to leave the eyes and look at perfectly proportioned hands clutching at a cigarette and lighter. "He put the bone back in," he observed, feeling small and full of dread as horrible thoughts pressed on his mind.

A tremor went through the hands. The eyes turned away to study the gas fire that burned merrily, oblivious. "Non. The Monsieur says it is better to…throw out th' old and start fresh, that his creations are _superior"—_his lips twisted in a gruesome bit of mimicry—"but truth is, th' great Master is too ham-fisted to untangle the little pieces. You should see him, frère!" He laughed; to Henri, it sounded like too-worn car breaks screaming.

"His face, it scrunches up all on the right side, and he just pulls it out and throws it against the wall…and the tantrums." White teeth, each as bright and pearlescent as a baby's first, flashed. "Like a little drooling retard that can't put the round peg in the square hole, who screams and breaks the toy against the floor. Eyes are th' worst. Too long. Too small. Won't track. And the color…he can never get it right. You should've seen the pile of them, by the time the left eye was _satisfactory_." Etienne tossed the cigarette butt into the fire and quickly lit another. Smoke poured past the gleaming, polished teeth as he chuckled. "Some Master, eh?"

Henri realized that he was meant to reply with a laugh, but he couldn't. Mounds of discarded eyeballs and teeth and wrist and finger bones filled his head. He couldn't stop the montage of flesh twisting, obeying its master's smallest whim. Superimposed over it all was the breathtaking beauty of his brother. Something had changed; the features were the same ones he had grown used to over the past six years, but there was something new about them, something terrifying and wrong.

He took in Etienne's bowed profile. A smooth line undulated down from the shoulder to circle lazily around an ankle. A single vertebra crested at the nape of the neck, and the tiny swell, lost in a sea of smooth skin, was so vulnerable. Downcast eyes and parted lips were unmistakably Etienne, and yet—he gaped in recognition. It was a face he had seen a thousand times, but he remembered it most vividly from when he was fifteen and splitting his attention between Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ and little Remy, who shivered as they lay together on a old varnished church pew.

XXX

Remy LeBeau had just barely turned nine, was whiter than whitewash, and lay firmly entrenched between Henri's splayed thighs. His cheek rested on Henri's stomach. His heart hammered on Henri's groin. His small body was crushed between Henri's bent left leg and the seat back of the pew. Henri's other leg was nonchalantly thrown up over the seat back and the obscene gesture was made complete by the small, shaking fist that clutched at the pant leg of his inner thigh. Henri hated himself.

There weren't words to describe his self-loathing then, but instead of pulling his brother up into a proper, comforting hug, he forced himself to stare blankly at the German text and follow Zarathustra's journey towards becoming the Übermensch. He wouldn't put it past his language tutor to test him on the book when he returned to the Guild, though that was assuming he would return to the Guild alive and not in bullet-ridden, pissed-on pieces.

When one of the armed men in the aisle beside him made a noise of disgust for the umpteenth time, Henri finally worked up his courage. He met the Assassin's gaze and in a deliberate move took his adopted brother's hand and moved it up his thigh until the man twitched and started to reach for a weapon. A small cough from the altar of the church froze the armed man in an instant, and Henri put on a smug smile that belied his overwhelming need to bundle the nine-year-old in his arms and flee to Antarctica.

He hated this. He wanted to go to high school. He wanted Remy to have friends that weren't lifer gang members and to know games that didn't involve a poker face and-or switchblade. He wanted to be anywhere but there in New Orlean's St. Louis Cathedral at three in the morning surrounded twitchy men with semiautomatics. Surrounded as he lay sprawled with his brother beneath ceiling frescos of saints and angels, in a position carefully deviated from the Kama Sutra. But he was there, all because his father and the Patriarch of the Assassins Guild couldn't have their so-called peace talks without turning every last detail into a psychological mind-fuck.

He fumed. It just had to be in a big shiny open place with no place to hide. It had to be stuffed to the gills with every man-for-hire in New Orleans and his uncle. Said men and uncles had to be armed to the teeth. The leaders' children had to be there as possible live human sacrifices. And, of course, it wasn't enough to just show up and cower as the other side's men surrounded them on all sides; they had to put on a _show. _

He recalled the young nun, one of the older Boudreaux children, that passed them as calm and serene as any vestal virgin facing martyrdom as they were traded between the Guilds' parties as a sign of trust. She was kneeling before a phalanx of votive candles, seemingly lost in prayer as per her instructions and therefore oblivious to the stinking, hulking mass of godless thugs surrounding her.

Henri's instructions were of a different sort. He was supposed to provoke his armed mob of Catholic fanatics by any and all means possible. Flagrant disrespect of a sanctified space: check. Book that proclaims "God is dead": check. Disgusting display of homosexuality, pedophilia, and incest that ensured his spot in hell: check. One terrified little boy who hadn't known about any of this but had been dragged out of bed anyway, who clung to Henri like he was salvation, and who made everyone in the Cathedral a monster by his mere presence:

Check.

God. Where was a divine intervention when you needed one?

Henri's eyes wandered from the Assassins stationed around him to the Crucifixion scene. The Christ figure's carved face was downcast and averted from the tableau before Him, but Henri had the strangest feeling that the thing was focused on him, on everything about him, but mostly on the trembling boy pressed into his traitorous teenage wood. It was the first time in his life that he wanted to die. He was in the presence of something otherworldly. He had been judged; he was unworthy. That wasn't what hurt. It was the resignation in that expression, the tired forgiveness. He was a lesser creature.

It was only expected.

XXX

Years later, in the subterranean study, stinking drunk, Henri straightened in his chair, finally feeling the swelling of his jaw through the haze of the brandy. He stared at his brother's face. Etienne was perfect, too perfect to be human. He thought of Magneto, in his eighties now, still strong—immortal? And the monster…

His world was collapsing. Mutant. It was a nice word that made him think of science experiments and coincidental flukes, of harmless genetic anomaly. It put Etienne and the people that threatened him away in a safe little box. Mutant: a subset of humanity. It was a word, like autistic, like prodigy, like psychopath. The words were unusual, offsetting, but perfectly acceptable on the fringe of someone's worldview. And it was perfect. It was a perfect little ruse that kept a "normal" person from thinking of the other, much more problematic words.

Words like Übermensch. Words like God.

He was going numb. He had to ask, had to hear it. "If…Masque were to come here, to this room, to take you from me, could I do anything to stop him?"

Something flickered in Etienne. "No. You couldn't."

"But you could," Henri finished.

Etienne turned, took in his brother's slumped body, and came forward to slip an arm under Henri's shoulder and around his back. He pulled him to his feet, murmuring, "Come, frère. To bed. The Council meets tomorrow. You must be at your best." He paused. The blue eyes pierced into Henri's soul. "These feelings. You're hurting. You can't protect me, Henri, but you are still my brother. I need you. Please, do you understand?" Henri watched tears prick just before Etienne's head buried itself into the crook of his shoulder. "Brother, I need you so much."


	4. Chapter 4

XXX—Part IV—XXX

Jean-Luc was never in a good mood on the days before a Council meet—they were never very pleasant for the Guild's ruling family—but this day he also had to deal with the debacle of his adopted child. Not only was Etienne squaring off against the world's most fearsome terrorist and his mutant army, but the boy was also making deals with another mutant that, his limited sources in that area agreed, was the devil wrapped in too much warped flesh. So, as a father and turf war veteran, he wasn't happy one bit.

Jean-Luc recognized the expression on his aide's face when he stormed through the man's office and into his own. As soon as his back was turned, one note would be sent out to the general staff to keep their heads down and another to put a discreet drywall repair service on call. Leaving the man to it, Jean-Luc slammed the door separating the rooms.

Damn him. The stupid boy…no. Jean-Luc caught himself about to throw a crystal tumbler at the door and forcibly put it down next to its matching glass by his bourbon. It wasn't that the boy was stupid. Etienne was too intelligent, too cunning for stupidity; this was something far worse: self-sacrifice.

While the trait was laudable in any of the small gears that kept the great machine of the Guild spinning, in one of the linch pins it was a fucking disaster. Why didn't Etienne understand how necessary he was? The Guild was in a technological war of escalation just to stay under the government's radar; the human gene pool had deepened into an ocean almost overnight; the world was militarizing against its own citizens; and the only person who seemed to understand it all was the boy that had picked his pocket twenty years ago and grown up into a leader without a clue. Lose him, and everything would be precarious as one of Remy's houses of cards: …Kaboom!

This time, he did hurl the glass at the door—just as it opened. Henri twisted and watched the impromptu projectile sail past him to shatter on the far wall of the adjoining office.

Unfazed, Henri turned to the aide, said, "My apologies, Michel," and then shut the door, closeting them in the dark room. After that, he didn't say anything to Jean-Luc until the both of them, with the bourbon, had been transported to the couch. Only then, staring at the far wall, did he ask, "Permission to brick Etienne into a monastery cell?"

Jean-Luc snorted. "As if that would hold him."

"I could snap a collar on his neck first."

"Mutant or priest's?"

"Both?"

A small pause before the reply. "Not even then."

Henri turned to glare at him. "Then what, Father, do you suggest we do? He's playing at a level I can't even comprehend. While he's doing it, he's determined to swaddle us and stuff cotton in our ears, but the secrets are costing our men their lives." He poured and swallowed a drink in one desperate go. "Christ, there wasn't anything left to bury; there almost wasn't anything left of me! The Council is going to make me wish there hadn't been."

At that, father and son shared a commiserating glance. In the old country, the LeBeau family had amounted to absolute monarchs in the Thieves' Guild. In America, because of the sheer scope of it all, an advising council had been established. Then, after a disaster with a Pinkerton agent resulting in the imprisonment of the only heir in 1892, the council became the Council, a body dedicated to making damned sure the line of succession the Guild prided itself on didn't go gallivanting off into deathtraps and…other…

"Fuck," said Jean-Luc, bolting upright. "It can't be that simple."

"What?" asked Henri in confusion.

XXX

Etienne was agog—a lot quicker on the uptake, but agog. "You did _what?"_

"I made you my heir," Henri said calmly. The words made even less sense to Etienne in repetition.

He whirled about to start pacing the length of the family's antechamber to the Council hall but was forced to stop and dig his fingers into the back of an armchair when his nerve endings started to jangle again. He took a steadying breath. Masque had done too much. It had been necessary, but it was all too much.

Henri sat in that calm and poised way of his, the regal one. Etienne could be powerful in standing, in the jump, the twist of battle, but sitting still was a battle lost. Especially sitting with nothing to do but contemplate. Unfortunately, Henri was pants at conversation before a Council meet, and Jean-Luc never arrived until the last second, so, sitting or standing, Etienne was left alone with this new revelation and the old memories it painfully resurfaced.

XXX

Remy LeBeau, aged eight, peered out the small window, watching the last day's decorations and stray beads be cleared away. It had been fun; lots of laughter and beautiful things, until the terror began, anyway. In the street, a poster drifted by. He smiled at it sadly, recognizing the picture. The boy had stared at it endlessly the day before.

A woman standing before the river stared at the onlooker, smiling. She had a lovely face with strong cheekbones and full lips held aloft by a slender neck. A maroon dress wrapped about her arms, leaving her broad shoulders bare. Her skin was as pale as the picture's moon but so much smoother. At first glance her hands seemed to actually be flesh colored, but they turned out to be covered in dun leather. She held out Mardi Gras beads in one gloved hand, and in the other she gripped a white mask of her beautiful own face. The river peeped out of the holes that were the mask's eyes. The woman's real eyes were the same intense, impossible blue. Shining black hair fell about her face in elegant waves, setting off the eyes. Remy could have stared at her forever.

The poster blew away, but the boy remembered the picture. When he had laid eyes on that woman, it marked the first time he had ever thought of a woman as beautiful. Of course, Henri's maman was…had been magnifique, but she had been family. Sort of. That woman, though, she was something special. When Remy had told Henri about her, his older brother had laughed and said that he could never touch the beauty, so what did he care? The boy smiled, looking out that window. She was special because she was untouchable. It didn't make sense, but it was right.

Remy shivered, remembering what had happened to his poster. Late the last night, Henri and he ran rampant through the streets with other boys. They were having a grand time shouting out meaningless things they had heard adults yell from time to time. Remy did know what most of those words meant, what with his time on the streets, but he didn't ruin it for the others. He spent the time looking at the people they passed, trying to figure out definitions for some of the stranger words based off of their faces.

The night's end came rather abruptly when no less than six of the Council's men grabbed Henri and hustled him into a van at only three times the speed of light, leaving Remy brotherless in the streets, suddenly frightened another turf war had started and he wasn't worth saving. While the strange boys milled about in confusion at what looked like a kidnapping, Remy ran away, ducking into the warren of alleys for a place to hide. He had curled up under a trash heap in the end and trembled there until a pair of rough hands hauled him out.

He didn't remember a lot in the haze of fear, just writhing, biting, and being too frightened to scream because of the unshakable certainty that an Assassin had him and, if he cried out, the rest would swoop in, and he would die that much more painfully. Then Father pulled him away to safety. The man dropped to his knees in the trash, holding Remy close, whispering, "You're safe, boy. You're safe, now."

Remy latched onto Jean-Luc LeBeau like a limpet and closed his eyes. Every little thing made him cling tighter, from the panicked, quiet hisses of "Get back to the car!" to the chink-chick-chink of what Remy would later learn was silenced bullets plowing into the asphalt and brick of the alley around them, to the squeal of tires, and the shouting of his father and his men against that of the Council guards about which was more stupid: the Guild's leader exposing himself during the eruption of a war to retrieve a child that meant nothing or, alternatively, the Council's men abandoning their leader's youngest son, one of his greatest weaknesses, in Assassin territory.

Eventually, Jean-Luc ordered silence and whispered into Remy's ear for the rest of the nerve-wracking drive through the still-packed streets of the French Quarter. "I'll always find you, Remy," he said and twisted the small gold loop in Remy's ear. "With this, I can always find you."

Remy had no words to reply with. His throat, like the rest of his body and his mind, had frozen.

It was when he did finally came back to himself, deep in the heart of the Guild's underground, that he realized she was gone. Somewhere in all the madness, he had lost hold of the poster and, in effect, the beautiful woman, never to see her again. Not until that moment the next morning when she glided past as he stared out the bulletproof window.

That next morning, he was dressed somberly, as was everyone. By some miracle, his wild and scraggly hair had been pulled into a neat, formal tail. To put it politely, Remy felt like he had been rudely kicked backwards a hundred years in time. In reality, he was thinking the same thing but with dozens of the words his friends had shouted last night spaced in between. He dug the crook of a finger into his collar and pulled. He was able to breathe for all of two blessed seconds before Henri looked over at him and told him to stop. Remy fixed the collar back to its original suffocating arrangement. Henri had told him to stop, so he had to; it was some sort of law.

Still, a part of him ordered that he forget the law and get comfortable before he asphyxiated. It wasn't just the collar. The shirt cuffs alone were going to kill him before breakfast if he didn't murder them himself. That was, of course, assuming that he didn't starve to death first. Henri and he had been waiting in an antechamber of the Council for one, two, three million hours since before dawn. Remy looked out the solitary barred window, watching his Mardi Gras be taken away, trying not to think about his empty stomach. His brother was reading, the book worm. It was about some old dead Frenchman, and Henri was fascinated, but the younger boy was more likely to eat that King Charles Magnet book than read it.

Ten minutes later and bored out of his sanity, Remy resorted to copycatting his brother's movements from the other end of the couch. Unfortunately, the older boy held very still, so the dreariness of his existence only worsened. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and opened his mouth to scream. At the same moment, Henri looked up and caught his eyes with a cool, deadly stare. Remy's jaw fell slack, and he stared back at his brother, rather frightened. In that moment, the older boy looked like their Uncle, who had only ever sneered at Remy, except for the one time, when he had kicked the boy in the ribs. He had died in a bomb blast two years ago. Remy shivered. Henri's eyes weren't hateful, but it was still a damned close resemblance.

Then his brother's eyes softened, and Remy remembered to breathe. He came forward and sat on the bench. Henri took pity and asked, "Want me to read to you?" He noticed the smaller boy's stricken face. "Ah, that's a no...oh, here." He dug into a small pack he had been using as a pillow and pulled out a pack of playing cards. He tossed them to his brother.

Remy smiled devilishly and pleaded, "Go Fish?"

Henri shot him a mild glare, and then went back to reading about Charles Magnet.

"He is my son!" came a sudden roar that passed right through the thick doors, making Remy jump in fright. "They are both my sons!" There was a pause, then, even louder, "Lourdes, fuck yourself!" The two boys stared at one another in the tense hush afterwards until Henri made a decision. He opened his arms. It took an instant for Remy to cross the length of the couch and burrow.

Jean-Luc came storming through the doors not long after. He deflated when his gaze caught Remy's. "You're not going in there, Rem. Son," he said. "Not today." He turned to the older boy and nodded. "Henri, you straighten up and go on in. I'll be there in a tic."

Henri hesitated before straightening the tie Remy had rumpled and passing through the door to the Council chambers. Jean-Luc knelt before Remy and pushed him back against the couch when he tried to worm into the inside of the man's flak jacket. "Rem, I'm no good at this shit," he said. "I've got to go back, but you need to know first. There's going to be people saying you're not my son, and you're not my blood, boy, but you are my son. You are a LeBeau, and one day they're going to see that. But not today. So you don't leave the complex without my men—_my_ _men_—with you, not ever." He reached out and shook Remy by the shoulders. You promise me that, Rem, right now."

Remy promised, and he kept that promise until the night his eyes went black, then red. That was the night that everything was broken.

XXX

At twelve years, Remy lay in the center of an empty train car with nothing but boxers, a nightshirt, torn sneakers, and tears that kept falling from his face and exploding like tiny firecrackers. It was the worst hiding place, all out in the open, but he couldn't move. The floor was red. He had touched it, and now if he let go, there would be fire and pain, and with the train hurtling north on the tracks, there would be no jumping to safety, only a wreck and death.

So, trapped in a hell of his own making, Remy lay there. He had tied a loose floor tether to his arm, thinking that being unable to accidentally lose contact with the glowing red would help him sleep. Only there was no sleep. It hadn't been a proper family. No mother, too many aunts and uncles dying left and right, private tutors in Russian and rifle sniping, but it had been his family. He had been alone before, living on the streets, and on the streets you didn't need nobody, but now Remy needed Henri and Jean-Luc, and they wanted him dead.

He was a creature. A demon. He destroyed everything.

Those three thoughts circled through Remy's head again and again as sleep never came. Then he realized he must be dreaming as the door to the train car slid open on its own and a man in armor floated into the glowing interior. He felt relief, then, because this must be a dream. In the morning, he would wake in his bed in the room next to Henri's. The only red would be strawberry jam, and he would eat it with toast, holding the bread in his fingers without the nauseous fear that was currently digging its den in his stomach.

The knight in armor reached for him slowly, to which Remy cried out, "No! You'll turn red! You'll turn red," or something that made even less sense. The stranger in the dream only paused long enough to count the moments between a crimson tear's fall and its burst into fizzling sparks before he bundled Remy in his cloak. Holding one part of the glowing tether to Remy's arms, the knight untied it from Remy's wrist. Then, in a rush of movement, they flew out of open train car and into the night sky. They went higher and higher, and Remy didn't dare scream, so it was silent for the second or so before the train car exploded in a bright flash.

Remy wanted to look away, but the knight said, "Watch. You must never be ashamed of your gift."

That was all it took. The mere suggestion that he wasn't a monster made Remy watch as the long train buckled and writhed like a snake set on fire until it toppled off the bridge, freight cars and too many screaming passenger cars plunging down into dark water and plumes of rising steam.

"Remarkable," said the knight after the river returned to quiet stillness. The word was said in an unimpressed voice, but Remy's tutors had taught him to listen, and in that level tone he found a note of fierce glee that chilled him. That frozen feeling persisted when the stranger asked, "I take it you have no home," and Remy nodded. Then the knight said, "Then your home will be with me," and there was a small, almost nonexistent prick, then warmth, painlessness, and sleep.

Years later, Remy would begin to suspect the moments Magneto the Knight miraculously solved a panic attack or difference of opinion with a glass of milk, a cookie, that tiny sting of pain and swooning serenity, but he was a child then—or something close. All he knew was that Magneto made him feel safe and, in the days that followed, helped him forget about the old near-family that—Magneto's words—had decided their prized pet was really vermin.

Magneto was like that: clever words, covert actions, and a carefully kept distance. He was nothing like Jean-Luc, which made everything easier to stomach. There was never any love between Remy and his Machiavellian knight, and that made it easier, too. Remy was finished with love.

XXX

"You're quiet," his brother remarked.

Etienne turned from the window to look at Henri, now standing beside him.

He put on a smile. "Just…remembering," he said. "Lourdes won't forgive you for doing this. He hates me."

"So I've noticed," said Henri in reply, grimacing.

"Why are you doing this, really? The treaties are stable. It makes better sense for you to marry and have a few LeBeau sons while the pax lasts. It would make the Council happy."

"You are a LeBeau son, brother," was the determined answer. "It's time the Council sees that. That's why I'm doing this."

Etienne smiled at that. "I love you too, frére—enough to call you on your complete bullshit."

Henri's face grew serious. "All right," he said. "Fair enough. You're a LeBeau in a shadow war, Etienne. That's nothing new, but you're facing off against an army by yourself and, as one LeBeau to another, I'm telling you that is not acceptable. So I am ordering you to march in there, take what is yours, and use the Guild to your advantage for once in your goddamn life."

Etienne paused for the longest time. Whether it was necessary or he really just wished to watch Henri squirm, he never said and, upon hearing the story in future times, no one ever dared ask. Then he repeated his smile and said, yet again, "I love you too, frére."

_

* * *

_

...So. The writer is currently studying in France, writing her senior thesis, and preparing for a solo gallery show in December. There are about 7-9 more chapters to Devil's Deal, depending. 5 have been written already, but the missing chapters are the ones that go right after this chapter. Yes, that sucks. The missing parts will likely magically appear when there's a huge school deadline looming, no doubt, but cross your fingers for me anyway. I hope the story thus far is enjoyed and no one wants to kill me for often referring to Remy as Etienne.

Bonne nuit.


	5. Chapter 5

Note: There will be a country separating my computer and I for the next few weeks, so I thought it best to stop fussing with this chapter and post the damned thing tonight. If after this chapter you need to read more, can't wait for my return to computerized civilization, and don't mind major, major plot spoilers, feel free to check out Devil's Deal's rather more lighthearted sequel Cloning Evolution, an incomplete and rather old but somewhat lengthy fic also found on FFN. Cheers.

XXX  
Devil's Deal  
XXX

XXX—Part V—XXX

There were, in fact, twelve members of the Council, but, as always was the case, there was one de facto leader whom all the rest looked to, listened to, and inevitably fell into step behind. This leader, unfortunately for Etienne, was Nick Lourdes, and that night Councilman Lourdes was just as disdainful towards Etienne as ever. Etienne had come to expect nothing less, but a twinge of hurt stubbornly remained.

Lourdes had been Pierre LeBeau's man. The stories still filtered through the Guild ranks, tales of the fiercest loyalty, the bullets taken for the last LeBeau to be called in dead seriousness the King of Thieves, and the friendship that the King had returned. Such tales always seemed at odds with the cold, brittle man with ebon skin and gray wire hair who sat in the Council chamber, determined to shred the newer generations into quivering pulp, Henri the single notorious exception.

Henri oozed inner nobility. The jagged edges of Jean-Luc had been smoothed over in him by some miracle, and thus the family's white sheep was spared Lourdes' scorn. The councilman's fierce disappointment, Henri would argue, was bad enough in its own way, but Etienne would snatch it up in a second. It would mean that his actions were being held up to those of LeBeaus past, that this man who knew the family better than they knew themselves wanted him to meet that standard.

Lourdes, however, with a single look as Etienne entered the chambers, made it clear that the adopted son was still considered the grime that sullied the true family's fingernails. The look only soured further when Etienne didn't follow tradition and retreat to a bench in the shadows behind Jean-Luc's chair at the round table. Instead, he moved to stand directly to the right of Henri's seat and pointedly ignored the looks from all around. He stayed there, silent, for several minutes while Jean-Luc and Henri made a point of greeting the councilmen they were on better terms with, as well as the ones they knew better than to ignore.

Lourde's hateful gaze only broke away from Etienne once, when Henri captured the man's attention with a firm handshake and that damnable, winning smile. That flash of teeth had softened some of the South's most heartless undesirables, but Lourdes remained standoffish, remarking only that he was looking forward to hearing Henri's, "explanation for this latest misadventure."

Rather than looked cowed, Henri stood tall, but he dropped the smile. "As am I," he said cryptically, and this earned him a raised eyebrow that, Etienne thought to himself, would have browbeaten Spock. Henri, bless him, remained unaffected and moved away to take the hands of an elderly nightmare named Delilah.

A warm, crushing pressure on Etienne's shoulder alerted him to his father's presence. He shot the man a frown. "Lovely way to give a man fair warning, père," he muttered, referencing the sweeping, overnight change in Henri's will.

Jean-Luc adopted a phony hurt expression. "Don't look at me like that. It was the man's own choice to make."  
"And as I said to him: bullshit."

"It was a sudden decision," Jean-Luc replied, smiling as he said it. "Now act nice and responsible for the Council. Looks like we're starting."

The Council and Etienne's family took their various seats as he stood by, waiting. Things started, anticlimactically, with reports on the Guild's financial quarter. Etienne was completely ignored until the moment when Henri reached under the table and squeezed his knee. Whether this was meant as reassurance or a warning to stop fidgeting, he wasn't sure. He shot his brother a small smile back in acknowledgment, regardless.

Councilwoman Eloise Thorpe, more commonly known in private among the LeBeaus as the Firebreather, must have caught the small exchange because she reared up then, as was her habit, and said to Henri, "The profit margin and the market share for sector five took a sudden dip in the last month and was allowed to remain unchecked, I see. Would you care to explain this apparent oversight, M. LeBeau?" Both Henri and Etienne sharpened at that. Sector five—burglary by another, sweeter name—had been Etienne's territory since his return to the Guild. This was well known. Another well known fact was that, though Etienne's presence was tolerated at Council meets, his speech was not. So he remained silent at the barb while Henri straightened.

The question, after all, had been meant for the LeBeau heir. In formal Guild situations, Jean-Luc was Monseigneur, something the man hated passionately; Henri was addressed first as Monsieur LeBeau and, subsequently, as Sir, while Etienne, if absolutely necessary, was called by his codename. "Sector five was a calculated loss," Henri replied blandly.  
"A miscalculation on your part it seems," the woman snapped back.

"I don't believe so, but very well. Etienne, would you care to explain?" Henri turned to look directly at Etienne with a fierce intensity, startling him into speaking:

"The…"

"M. LeBeau," Thorpe admonished Henri sharply, effectively beheading Etienne's sentence, "This meeting has been called to question your suitability as an heir to this organization, not to showcase your ability to fob off your duties onto your…fawning lackeys."

Etienne sucked in a breath, wondering if he was bleeding only metaphorically or physically as well; he would have bet money on the latter. Henri, being Henri, was completely unaffected. "Eloise," he said familiarly, in an uncharacteristic and utter rejection of protocol, "it's completely fair to request an explanation for the seeming failure of my heir's own plan. What else are these damn meetings for?"

The room went dead quiet. It took a good ten seconds for the Council to drop out of their stupor, something which Jean-Luc enjoyed immensely, Etienne noticed. He himself was beginning to feel nauseous.

"You cannot…" one man tried, but Henri cut him off.

"I assure you, Councilman, I can and did. When my Aunt Edith and her children died in the last Guild war, I effectively became the only LeBeau heir. I currently have no progeny of my own, something that jeopardizes not only the line of continuation but the foundation of the Thieves Guild itself. Therefore, in the best interests of the Guild, I have named my brother—adopted brother, if you must insist—to succeed me should my father pass and I die heirless. Furthermore, should it come to it, he is also the appointed regent for any orphaned LeBeau issue, be it my own or"—he shot Jean-Luc a knowing look—"my father's. As I recall, the Council's charter forbids its members from interfering with the LeBeau line of succession. There will be no discussion. Etienne LeBeau is the second in line and will remain so for a minimum of eighteen years. Etienne," he continued in a terser voice, dropping his soft oratory, "your report."

The spell was broken, and all eyes immediately shifted to Etienne

"The loss of profit," Etienne began, refusing to look anywhere but at Henri. His hesitant words were like honey, he noticed, but the vocal chords stung as they hummed inside his throat. He fell silent. Was there any inch inside or out that Masque had not touched?

"Speak up," his brother ordered.

Louder, he repeated, "The loss of profit in burglary was expected. I ordered those with other specialties to switch professions and the rest to lie low in legal temp jobs that I provided."

Councilman Roper, the economist in the bunch practically snarled. "Why?" he demanded. "We had the market cornered, and now the word on the street is that sector five has become fair game."

"Yes, I spread the 'word' myself."

Roper's mouth worked before he managed to say, "You had better explain."

Etienne explained. "Sector five has burglary down to a science; I should know. It's quiet, no mess, and between our forgers and our tendency to steal items that are already hot, half the time the job isn't even reported. It's done that way because it keeps us off the radar and out of jail. I told the men to stand down because I couldn't use them to spike the burglary statistics in good conscience. Someone would land in jail, and his wife would try to kill me." Etienne was only half joking; he could think of four women who would do more than try. No one laughed.

"Why would you want to make the crime statistics go up?" Jean-Luc asked quickly, probably trying to beat a Council member to the question. "That's never good for us."

"Besides the fact that it makes our honorable mayor's hard stance against organized crime look like pussyfooting during an election year?" Etienne asked mildly. He ignored Jean-Luc's sudden declaration of 'I'm in.' "The Guild seems to keep forgetting that it has a legitimate business front now. I notice none of those quarterly reports are on the table, so let me summarize. One of those businesses is a security firm. When the Guild bowed out and the amateurs swept in, reported break-ins, theft, and violence went through the roof. The police had become complacent and couldn't handle the crime wave. I spiked the crime statistics because when people don't feel safe and the police are incompetent, they turn to private security."

"And the security firm is doing well, I take it?" Henri asked.

"When you factor in latest the public stock gains, it's almost compensated for the loss in sector five," Etienne, replied, feeling more comfortable, as if the other shoe waiting to drop was only in his head. "I'm more interested in the fact that the extra profit will remain after the heat dies down and sector five starts up again in full force. More than full, actually; recruitment has gone up. The amateurs seem to finally be realizing working outside of the Guild is bad for their rap sheet. Also, the morale is up. It seems that the art specialists like being able to case a place in broad daylight and come back later at will to switch out the pieces, knowing they installed the security system themselves. I shut the sector down completely, so you should note that the profit in sector five this quarter has been entirely from art sales."

Several sets of blinking eyes looked down at the graphs before them with a new perspective, and Etienne finally allowed himself to breathe easily, knowing that he had them. Even the stoic Lourdes was picking his way through the numbers. Henri's hand squeezed his knee again, and Etienne almost smiled.

Then Lourdes looked up. The councilman pushed the briefs before him to the side. "Given"—he actually grimaced at having to say it—"M. Etienne LeBeau's rather public success with the LeBeau Corporation, it should come as a surprise to no one that he is capable of turning a profit, provided he sets his mind to it. But then, he has been rather distracted of late, hasn't he?"

Etienne suddenly felt an unconquerable need to flee to someplace very, very far away, but, dammit, Henri's hand was still gripping his pant leg.

Lourdes removed and folded his reading glasses before staring at Etienne, his gaze piercingly sharp without the bifocal lenses to soften it. "M. Etienne LeBeau, I had been waiting most patiently to ask your brother this question, but in light of recent events, I believe I will ask it to you now. The question is simply this: What in Fuck's name possessed you to pass, unarmed, into Assassins' territory—"

"I would argue, sir," Etienne interrupted with a wave of his fingers, "that I am never unarmed."

Lourdes gave him a poisonous look that would kill a cobra. "Yes, a public display of violent mutant powers in a downtown area is just what we need. You would have called down those Sentinel contraptions like brimstone down on Gomorrah, and, thanks to your infamously wanted face, they would have slapped you in a government detention cell so deep in the ground that God couldn't free you. As you are a mutant, I have no doubt you have heard the many sordid rumors about such places, so let me merely confirm them. Having landed there, you would have been tortured, humiliated, and, yes, M. Etienne, raped up until the very moment they dragged you out for a very swift, very public, very thorough execution. A fitting display of strength to our allies and enemies that would make, do you agree?" Lourdes paused just long enough to take a sip of water. "If I were asking a question of your adopted brother and experienced this sort of callously thoughtless backtalk, I would order him to sit down and shut up, but you seem to be curiously lacking a seat. As such, I will simply tell you to stand still, you stupid child, and not interrupt me again."

Etienne couldn't help it. He swallowed.

Lourdes straightened and, without a hitch, continued as though his tangent diatribe had never happened. "…into the very heart of Assassins' territory, M. Etienne, to meet with a dangerous, notoriously unstable individual? As an additional question, as you are clearly not your brother, I will further ask you how, in your estimation, was a fancy dye job worth not only the risk to your life and your brother's but the real deaths of four of the Guild's best men!" After a beat of silence, he added, "This, M. LeBeau, is where you formulate a response."

Feeling eyes on him from the side, Etienne glanced left and saw both Henri and his father waiting with expectant expressions. He realized with a start that they had intentionally set Lourdes upon him. The little shits. "Et tu?" he wanted to ask Henri, but he really didn't want to hear what the councilman would have to say about that, so he only risked sending his brother a poisonous look to match Lourde's before turning to face the Council.

"There is a reason, sir," he began, "that the Magneto is the world's number one most wanted."

"That small matter, though it will certainly be covered, has no bearing on the one at hand."

At that, Etienne suddenly felt furious. He tempered it, but his next words still came out fast and sharp. "Not to interrupt, councilman, but it has everything to do it. You clearly don't realize the threat that Magneto is. He has no territory, no share of the market. He doesn't fit anywhere into the power structure you all breathe. That makes you think he is just one man, and, yes, he is. What you don't understand is that he doesn't need it, any of it, because he is power!"

Etienne placed his hand on the conference table. Many of the hardened men and women seated around it edged back as the paneled wood took on a bright cherry glow. "This is power," Etienne said, "but it won't be enough. Magneto has decided that he wants this, and he sees the Guild as so much tissue paper and weak-willed accountants standing in his way. I am only here now and not…" he stopped short and repressed a shudder, unable to voice the details. "I am only here because I gambled that he needed me intact more than he wanted to grind me and my impertinence into a crippled, drooling wreck. I won that move, so he responded by riddling me with bullets, forcing me to be healed completely, full system reset. This pinned me to the Guild complex because of my 'infamous' face, and it was no coincidence.

"Rather than risk us all by staying a sitting duck, I went to Masque to try to regain the advantage. He was furious to learn Magneto had shot 'his art' to pieces. Today, I stand before you with my fancy dye job while Magneto contends with the first wave of the army of Masque's debtors, so yes: I think it's safe to say I succeeded." He paused, shuttered his eyes. "I hadn't expected to be followed. I regret the deaths, but to brutally honest, it was worth the cost because Magneto, the same Magneto who nearly killed twenty-three of our men on a whim, knows the Guild is my weakness. It is my duty, isn't it, to do whatever is necessary to protect the Guild from destruction?" Etienne pulled his power from the table and let his hand fall to his side. "I did what was necessary," he said woodenly, staring down Lourdes. "Does that answer your question?"

The chamber was silent.

XXX

"I will be fair to you, M. Etienne," Lourdes said at last. "I will not question your stupidity in not immediately alerting the Council to the fact that the terrorist Magneto has effectively declared war on the Guild. In return, you will answer the questions about to be put to you simply and to the point. First, can he be bargained with?"

"No," Etienne replied instantly. "He prefers blackmail and strong arm…"

"That is enough," Lourdes said brusquely, cutting him short. "Would he back down if at this point you were to accept his offer?"

Henri and Jean-Luc surged up from their seats as one with shouts of "Out of the question!" and "Over my rutting corpse!"

Lourdes ignored them, prodded Etienne with a waiting look, and nodded after the mutant admitted, "Oui."

"No," Jean-Luc insisted, "I forbid it."

"Yes, Monseigneur, because it worked out so well the last time you forbid M. Etienne from embarking upon a course of action. Monsieur," he said to Etienne again, "I understand that you lived with this Magneto for several years, correct?"

Etienne closed his eyes. "Correct."

"Then you know him. Does he have family?"

"Yes. Two adult children."

"If they were to be collected?"

Etienne tried to picture that bargaining session and found his mind collapsing from the sheer improbability. "A waste of resources," he said simply, then felt need to elaborate when several of the more traditionalist council members looked unconvinced. "He put the girl in asylum as a child and then altered her memories when she tried t'kill him. He abandoned the son to foster care and never spoke of him until his mutant gene activated and he became useful. He would leave them to fend for themselves."  
"What weaknesses can be exploited, then?"

"His ego."

Lourde's eyes sharpened. "Explain," he said.

"He…grandstands," Etienne replied after a momentary loss for words. Magneto was something that the world hadn't made up words for yet. "He delegates the small tasks, but if it's important, he will be on the front line to make the checkmate himself. Only the checkmates, though. He won't risk himself on maybes. The trick is keep his chances slim and an Ace up your sleeve to scare him off if he makes an appearance."

"Will he lead a direct assault?"

"With the New Orleans Sentinel outpost around the corner? No."

"What about exposure?"

The room went still. Etienne paused. He knew the ins and out of that sort of threat. He had grown up with it. His childhood had been spent in a Guild war, and exposure had been the monster under his bed. Exposure was a MAD weapon, a secret society's version of the nuclear bomb. If revealed to the world, they were wounded, maybe fatally, but they would be damned if they didn't take the enemy out with them. But Magneto didn't count on secrecy to survive. He was the world's number one most wanted target, and that was a large part of his power: fear.

Still, he considered the question. "No," he said at last. "If Magneto exposes the Guild, he exposes the mutant children and families we harbor. He can't lose the support of the mutant community, and if he exposes us, we gain the support he loses."

Lourdes had leaned back in his chair and was looking at Etienne quizzically. "Very well. A final question, for now. Have you slept with him?"

Etienne froze. At his side, he felt more than saw Henri and Jean-Luc tense, listening. He scowled. He had never spoken in detail about his time with Magneto, and he would be damned before he started to. "That is a very private question," he warned, hands fisting.

"Not here it isn't," was the waspish reply. "Have you slept with this Magneto? Answer the question, Etienne LeBeau." Lourdes leaned forward, lined face tight, crows feet gone nearly black in shadow, his whole body physically demanding a response.

And Etienne LeBeau responded. "No," he said with clear emphasis, "I have not."

XXX

An inquisition on more mundane matters went on for another two hours. The Council, clearly not happy with Henri's decision, grilled Etienne on any subject he had any involvement in and several where he had none before finally dismissing him. He might have stayed for spite, but it would have been silly to remain standing at the oval table like a naughty child before his betters. So, with his head high, he left the chamber and made for the elevator. He was eager to drop into the tub in his suite and smother his screaming nerves.

It was to his extreme discomfort then, that as he leaned against the elevator wall with his head in the crook of his elbow, waiting for the doors to completely close, Lourdes stepped inside. The man took out his keycard and fed it into the reader but didn't input his code. The elevator stalled. Etienne shifted. The words elevator cage suddenly had new meaning.

"Boy," Lourdes said, "I'm sure you won't misconstrue this as a complement when I say you are the most idiotic genius I have ever met. That being said, I don't believe you are a liar. Your maneuvers with this Masque character seem to suggest otherwise, but I will leave that be. Just answer me this, truthfully. He folded his arms and leaned back against the elevator doors. "Worse case scenario, if all your little maneuverings are worthless and I don't hand you to Magneto bound and gagged on a platter, just how fucked are we?"

Etienne sighed, too tired to keep up the brave front any longer. "Well and truly."

"Well then, I'd say we're in for a long night."

"Pardon?"

Lourdes straightened. "I tolerate your adopted father. Barely," he said, "and I love his son like my own, but Henri is completely over his head with this, and he knows it. So it is down to you, and it is down to me." He scoffed at Etienne's stare and punched in his security code. "Do you actually think I would let a mutant genius with insight to this madman's mind out of my sight before I had a working battle plan? You are an idiot."

* * *

I'm not exactly thrilled with a chapter that takes place almost completely in a boardroom, especially after a chapter with street wars and exploding trains. However romantic and exciting a Thieves Guild is as an idea, though, it still needs to make payroll. That, and I wanted a situation where Etienne would be very uncomfortable: cue boring conference setting. So while not much happens in this chapter, complicated character relationships were depicted and the behemoth of the Guild was illustrated. I also happen to like Lourdes as a character because he cuts straight to the bone and asks the really, really hard questions.


End file.
